I've looked around and there doesn't seem to be a live, official post on this, so I'll just put my thoughts here. Most of these have been mentioned multiple times, but I am adding them here for completeness.

1) Create and manage drone groups from the unified inventory.

2) Add additional information and commands to the inventory screen specific to each hull type. For drones it might be that they need repair or other drone specific things. Bandwidth should be included in this and each group should be limited to the bandwidth of the ship as well as indicating if you have more drones in the group than you can run. Eight drone groups should be sufficient for just about anything (see reserves concept below).

3) Given the new NPC AI, it would be nice if drones auto-repair slowly while in bay. Also a slight HP bump of medium and heavies so they can last long enough to get out and get back. Perhaps this might require a module or a module might increase the repair rate.

4) Have buttons for launching and recalling each group of drones (or the ability to assign groups to buttons). If the drone group is already released, recall the current group and launch the next group when all recalled drones get back OR are destroyed on the way. If no drones are in space launch the drones selected.

5) Have a toggle that changes modes for drones between aggressive (attack targets in drone control range who have fired on you or who you firing on/have targeted), defensive (attack targets that attack you, but return to orbit once they have no more targets), or assist (attack whomever you are attacking).

6) Drones that aren't in a given drone group are reserves. Drones that are destroyed in a drone group are replaced by the exact drone in the drone reserves automatically. When re-launched the drone group should be full again.

7) Shortcut keys for recalling drones should remain and recall whatever drone group is engaged. The shortcut key for engage (F) should work for combat drones, mining drones (should start the mining), salvage drones (should start them salvaging), and EWAR drones (should start them... EWARing).

8) Drone sizes should be shown as an overlay on drone icons the same way that guns get overlays for (S, M, L). Perhaps T, for sentries as they're very turret-like.

9) Remove Mine Once from mining drones unless someone can give me a reason for this particular menu option.

10) Please add an indicator that a drone, or more likely, a drone group is being targeted and something else that shows more clearly that they're being damaged.

11) Shift-clicking (also available with keyboard shortcut) a drone group with destroyed drones will send out replacement drones. (Not sure we want to fully automate it by automatically sending drones out when other drones are destroyed.)

EDIT: Consolidated ideas into original post.